Forbidden *** (1932, Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Bellamy) – Classic Movie Review 4975

Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou and Ralph Bellamy star in Frank Capra’s 1932 film about a young librarian who falls in love with a married man while on a sea cruise, based on the novel Back Street by Fannie Hurst.

Co-writer/ director Frank Capra’s 1932 love-triangle romantic drama stars Barbara Stanwyck as librarian Lulu Smith, who takes a cruise to Cuba and becomes lawyer Bob Grover (Adolphe Menjou)’s lover. He turns out to be a district attorney married to a crippled woman. Lulu breaks off the romance when he tells her he is married, but Lulu has a baby and doesn’t tell him.

She passes herself off as the baby’s nanny but Bob adopts the little girl, not telling his wife. Lulu gets a job at a newspaper. He enters politics as a rising politician and is hounded by newsman Al Holland (Ralph Bellamy), who gets the dirt on Bob. Al loves Lulu too and wants to marry.

The great Stanwyck’s shrewd and affecting performance holds it all together, though it is a contrived and rather daft weepie well below Capra’s finest work. Now it is just an interesting curio antique.

It is based on the 1931 novel Back Street by Fannie Hurst. The screen story is by Frank Capra, and the adaptation and screenplay are credited to Jo Swerling.

Helen Hayes had already baulked at making the film. Stanwyck did not want to do it either and she and Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn went to court to fight over whether she must do it under her contract. He won, making her do it, but she got the huge fee she demanded.

Also in the cast are Dorothy Peterson as Helen, Henry Armetta as Emile, Thomas Jefferson as Wilkinson, Myrna Fresholt as Roberta (baby), Charlotte Henry as Roberta (aged 18), Oliver Eckhardt as Briggs, Roger Byrne, Lynn Compton, Larry Dolan, Mary Jo Ellis, Robert Graves, Halliwell Hobbes, Harry Holman, Carmencita Johnson, Seesel Ann Johnson, Claude King, Wilfred Noy, Gertrude Pedlar, Robert Parrish, Helen Parrish, Cooke Phelps, Helen Stuart, Dick Winslow, Florence Wix, Nora Cecil, Arthur Hoyt, Fred Kelsey, Jessie Arnold and Harry Todd.

Forbidden is directed by Frank Capra, runs 85 minutes, is released by  Columbia Pictures, is written by Frank Capra and Jo Swerling, based on the novel Back Street by Fannie Hurst, is shot in black and white by Joseph Walker, is produced by Harry Cohn, and is scored by David Broekman, Irving Bibo and Alfonso Corelli.

Frightened by the movie lights, Stanwyck’s horse reared and threw her off, kicking her. She ended up with a dislodged tail-bone, which caused her permanent discomfort.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4975

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The theatrical release poster for Forbidden (1932).